During the 2012 election, Republicans developed a makers vs. takers theme epitomized by Mitt Romney’s infamous comments about the so-called 47%. New polling data suggests one of the reasons the line backfired is that lower-income voters are primarily interested in opportunities.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 67% of lower-income voters think it’s Very Important for our economic system to provide everybody with an opportunity to succeed. For this analysis, “lower-income” is defined as less than $30,000 a year. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on February 6-7, 2013 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

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